New Balance Update: more adjustments and a new spell (phase 7)

[Gabburtjuh]

Originally Posted by blood-raven

i think you won't be the only one, marks and hunters are growing to close to eachother, why play a marks if you can have a pet + camo + same dmg?

regards

Believe me, there is no hunter that can do thesame dmg as a marks with thesame gear, if the marks is setup for max normals.

[blood-raven]

Originally Posted by Gabburtjuh

Believe me, there is no hunter that can do thesame dmg as a marks with thesame gear, if the marks is setup for max normals.

yes, but the pet makes up for this, and even more.

regards

[Gabburtjuh]

pet, dies if camo, and if ppl would use their brain, trolls would die within secs in RvR, i mean, cmon, you cant miss the troll in the enemy ranks, i love those stupid things for a terror and my hunter has a hotkey for them >.<

[tjanex]

I like the supporting back stap titel of the Hunter!

[-Ludovik-]

I still see that Marksman balance is being avoided.
When Recharged arrows and mana cost in general will be revisioned?
At least you finally solved that terrible bug, I really appreciate this, and I hope now I won't get anymore some manaburn (1)
Well I imagine that one of the main purposes of this balance update is adding more dynamics to the gameplay.
You adfirmed that players should be able to use every kind of weapon, and for this you changed many things such as weapon's attack speed, primary attribute formula etc..
Now I am a level 50 marks, and I would like you just to consider this:
You changed Dexterity formula, and now 1 point of dexterity give the same damage bonus not depending on weapon' (bow) speed.
In my opinion, this new formula creates a fall of dinamycs, I explain why.
Now the difference of attack speed between different bow's kinds (fast - medium- slow) is noticeable but the damage difference is really low, and my fast 25 (ex fast 20) bow has by far the highest dps between all my bows.
In general the new formula takes me to use only fast bows because medium and slow ones become quite useless, in other words fast bows are really better because they do a little less damage than slow bows, but their speed make them overcome the rest of bows in terms of convenience.
Archers will pratically use fast bows 90% of time, and may be sometimes a medium 35 bow (ex medium 30) for the +5 range and parabolic shot.
Probably you will say that medium and slow bows will be usefull for some kinds of spell that relies their damage on 100% attack damage, and to use Long bows tree, but as a Marksman I really think that this reasons are not sufficient for use to use those bows.
With the new removal of movement speed, CC are a must, we don't have points to waste in bow's trees and we can still get parabolic shot and rapid shot that are quite usefull for us.
And plus +100% AD spells have died with the damage reduction and new kind of protection - protection buff.
How many spells we have that relie on +100% attack damage? The only one I used was Dual shot, just sometimes to prevent enemies dancing around me but now I can't waste point on it so...
And the new spell "Dead eye" still remains useless:
not counting with new auras, damage reduction in genereal etc. this spell itself can give no more than +30 damage but I lose a normal hit (around 280) every 4 hits, It's like an auto damage-mana debuff.

[Gabburtjuh]

Originally Posted by -Ludovik-

and my fast 25 (ex fast 20) bow has by far the highest dps between all my bows.

And you have to be closest, which means you will be more of a target, so high dps and high dmg on you, or abit lower and less dmg, its a tradeoff, all classes have it, even warriors, 1 very high hit and the chance its evaded, or 2 lower hits and hope you will atleast land 1?

[Raindance]

I would change all knockdown spells; give them a higher % chance to knock each level, but make knockdown spells 2-3 seconds depending on the spell, or even making them a simple knockdown for 1 second just to give the caster a little edge over the battle.

For example: Feint level 5: knockdown chance 100%, the enemy is knocked down (2 seconds). Feint level 1: knockdown chance 50%, the enemy is knocked down (2 seconds). However I'm not sure if this concept would be good for RvR. Also: as if Regnum needed more randomness or it would make everyone skill 19 Tactics, or some other reason.

I've seen many games with this kind of knockdown system, however I am not saying NGD should take the short road and copy those games. It's just an idea, and usually NGD takes ideas like these and uses them as examples to do their own changes.

All aside, I do believe CC's should be changed somehow if NGD's going to change most spells to 10 seconds like AoO.

[-Ludovik-]

Originally Posted by Gabburtjuh

And you have to be closest, which means you will be more of a target, so high dps and high dmg on you, or abit lower and less dmg, its a tradeoff, all classes have it, even warriors, 1 very high hit and the chance its evaded, or 2 lower hits and hope you will atleast land 1?

Well I can still use my FAST 30 (ex fast 25), still having better dps than slow and medium bows, 30 meters is max (non buffed) range actually on Ra, I don't consider it as close.
Anyway I am not saying that fast bows have high dps, the simply have better dps than slow and medium, while the range loss is quite insignificant, this make the last ones useless.
Hope they change something to Dex formula.

[Comp]

Originally Posted by Gideon_Slack

I've just got some more info on Reveal Enemy (haven't been able to get on Amun to test today).

It looks like Reveal Enemy is not a buff for the caster, it is a debuff for the target.

It is a one-time only debuff that effects a 30m cone in front of the caster. Any camoed or stalkered player in the area of effect becomes visible for the duration of the Reveal spell. They keep any debuffs of the camo or Stalker spell (speed malus). They will return to camo if any time is left in its duration after Reveal wears off.

If Reveal Enemy is cast on a hunter before he camos, he will be visible until the Reveal wears off, at which time he will camo (provided there is still some time left in the camo).

This implementation of Reveal still gives camo a lot of power, and looks like it will facilitate fluid gameplay. However, there may be a few problems:

1) Because of the speed malus, there should be a way to cancel Stalker without using a buff or attacking, especially since at level 5 Stalker is a 5 minute long spell. (Previously moving canceled it). Maybe simply pressing the Stalker icon/tile again?

2) Clearing forts of camoed Hunters is going to be a hellish process. Before other Hunters just used Escapist to run around the fort, as it triggered whenever you passed the enemy. Now it will require spamming Reveal and Track. Perhaps camoed players should just be ejected from forts when they are captured (though this will mean much less fun ).

3) The Hunter who casts Reveal Hunter has a sparkling animation around him for the duration of the spell. Since Reveal is not a buff, but a target debuff, there doesn't seem to be a purpose for this.

The way reveal works is just as you say; however, the duration ranges from 20 seconds at lvl 1 to 80 seconds at lvl 5 - a nice range is lvl 3 at 35 seconds. The individual cannot re-camo or re-stalker until the duration of the spell wears off (unless a mage dispells reveal).

Clearing of forts will be able to be done by 2 hunters just using reveal since reveal works in an arch at about range 30.

[Comp]

Originally Posted by Shwish

Lets look at all the updates NGD has made to hunters in the past 7 phases:

- Pets are removed when the hunter casts camouflague --> supportive addition to hunters
- Cold Blood --> offensive addtion for hunters
- Death Sentence --> supportive addition for hunters
- Reveal Enemy --> Supportive addition for hunters
- Improvement on Stalker Surrounding --> Supportive addition for hunters

and the one change made to marksman being the removal of a marksmans only support spell for an offensive damage buff

so clearly NGD is on the road to making hunters the real supportive archer and marksman the offensive archer and theres still more to come

Great post...and so so true. You'll see less and less pet based hunters because there's far more fun things for hunters to use in a support role. Also, pets can't camo. Current they can move with hunter under stalker - but Ponter pointed out that they are fixing that.